


take all the courage you have left

by dizzy



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M, they're furries janet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-21 22:31:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13153368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: Dan finds a second game on Phil's old computer from his teens, or: the story of how Phil's spent most of his life running from certain words and ideas in his own head.





	take all the courage you have left

**Author's Note:**

> For Charlotte. ♥

Dan finds the game on the old mammoth laptop Phil dragged home to London. He’s impressed it still boots at all, having made the journey with them from his parents place in Isle of Man, but Dan thought Mark of Oxin would play well on the gaming channel. 

Phil’s deliberating on whether to junk the entire thing; minimalism is the word of the day around their flat lately, trying to untangle the web of nostalgia and memories and part with the things that they just don’t really need. 

They definitely don’t need this remnant of Phil’s teenage boredom years, but somehow it stays anyway, and stays long enough that Dan gets nosy and starts to poke around Phil’s installed programs and documents. 

“No porn?” Dan asks for the tenth time, almost wistfully. 

“No porn,” Phil says. “My mum used it for a while once I got a better one. Download speeds were too crap for much anyway.” 

“Are you sure?” Dan asks. “This one says Lion’s Game. Sounds like furry porn to me.” 

Phil sits up. “What?” He asks. “That’s on there?” 

Of course it’s on there. 

“Yeah, what - oh, it’s another game. You didn’t tell me you had another one!” Dan looks delighted. “Can we play this one on the channel, too?” 

“It’s not finished,” Phil says. His heart is pounding in a weird sort of way. “I never finished it.” 

Dan catches something in that tone. “Can I play it?” He asks. 

His instinct is to say no, because he kept this so closely guarded when he was a teenager that it feels wrong to just casually allow someone else access to it. 

But it’s Dan.

“Yeah,” he says. “You can play it.” 

 

I.

Phil's game begins in a grassland, and it starts with a lion cub half-grown.

The Lion has no name, because Lions don't have names. Names are a human concept, and he doesn't even know what a human is. He’s just a Lion, living his Lion life. His paws are too big and his mane is light and only half-grown in, but he’s going to be a big strong lion when he grows up. 

All Lion knows is the sun over his head is warm and the zebra that he chases are tasty when he catches them and that lions are supposed to have prides. 

He’s supposed to have family. He’s not meant to be as alone as he is. Somewhere out there, there’s a pride of Lions just as scrawny and weird as he is. 

(But if he can’t find his pride he’d at least settle for just one friend.)

* 

When Phil is young, no one questions it. 

He’s just Phil - goofy, silly Phil. Sometimes he barks like a dog and his mum just laughs. Sometimes he uses her eyeliner pencil to draw whiskers on his cheeks and all she does is sigh and wipe until they’re nothing but smudges against his skin. 

He runs around the schoolyard pretending he’s a lion and he chases the girl who runs the fastest and pretends she’s a cheetah. He pretends she’s the fastest cheetah in the world and when he catches her he pounces her into the mud. 

The teacher scolds him for playing too rough, but she doesn’t understand that big cats in the wild don’t play gentle. She’s not a zebra, he’s not trying to hurt her! It’s just play fighting. 

But the girl, it turns out, is quite angry that her new shoes are scuffed and muddy. She cries and Phil feels awful and he tries to explain that he just wants to play with her. 

“You can try to chase me,” a girl says. Her hair is short and brown and her knee is scraped up already. She’s got an accent that’s not really like his. “I’ll be _faster_ than a cheetah. You’ll never catch me, you’re just a stupid lion!”

She cackles and takes off. His face lights up and he runs after her. 

*

The forest is a maze of trees. 

Phil puts them in confusing clusters, and he hides dangers all along the way. The Lion is still a cub; his teeth are small and his claws not yet as sharp as they need to be. He puts hills that are too high for the Lion to climb and rivers too wide for the Lion to cross. 

But he puts a way around, as well. A bridge that he imagines in his mind's eye to be a log, a narrow crossing requiring precise placement of the paws. But Lion can do that, because Lion is graceful (in all the ways that Phil is not). Even somewhere like the forest where he’s not really meant to be. 

*

Anja starts to come over to his after school. She plays video games with him and sometimes Martyn, which Phil likes because Anja can beat Martyn at a couple of the games. He always gets mad and calls them dumb kids, and then their mum yells at him.

It’s fun to watch Martyn get in trouble. 

But it’s even more fun how Anja will play lion with him, or sometimes they’re wolves, or bears. She likes to be a fox too, and make a high pitch screeching noise that is so loud his mum makes them go to the park and play. 

It’s nice to have a best friend. 

*

Lion gets his first friend at the end of level two, on the other side of the big rushing river with the single log crossway. 

His friend is a lemur, with big blinking eyes and a long monkey tail. 

“I can’t be your friend,” Lemur says. “Lemurs have troops, and I need to find my own troop. Besides, you have big teeth and you might eat me. I’d rather not be eaten.” 

“I won’t eat you,” Lion says, laying down and putting his head on his paws. He’s trying to look as un-intimidating as possible. 

Lemur's not really sure what to make of Lion to begin with. He doesn't trust that Lion won't have him for dinner, he thinks that Lion is probably trying to trick him with Lion says that he's a zebratarian and would never eat a Lemur. 

The whole third level is Lion proving his worth to Lemur, because Lemur might not really be part of Lion’s pride, and Lion does still want to find his pride… but Lion's awfully tired of being lonely. 

*

Secondary school means more homework, less time to play, and most of his friends suddenly being in other places all the time. 

“I made you a present,” Anja says as she draws in her sketchbook. They’re both sat in Phil’s room, Phil working on a video game he’s been making all summer while she lays on the bed behind him and draws. 

“Did you really?” Phil asks, delighted. He spins in his spinny chair, taking the opportunity to stretch his fingers from where they’ve been cramped around a mouse for the better part of an hour. 

She turns the sketchbook around. She’s drawn him as a lion, mane all fluffy and roaring. 

“I love it!” Phil says, genuinely delighted. “Can I have it? I want to put it on my cabinet. I’ve got a lion magnet, it’ll be perfect. Drawing Lion and Magnet Lion can be best friends!”

“You’re so weird,” she says, but she looks pleased as she rips it out of the sketchbook and hands it to him “But I’m glad that you like it.”

When she leans forward her top gapes open at the front, and he can see the pale swell of her breasts against her bra. 

He averts his eyes almost immediately, because he doesn’t want Anja to think he’s staring at her. He doesn’t want Anja to think he’s that kind of guy, because Phil does have a lot of friends and a lot of them say some properly dirty things about girls in their year. It’s like once they turned fourteen no one has time for anything else but that. 

Phil tries to look at girls and see what all his other friends see. 

Right now, all he sees is... Anja. There’s nothing so special about any part of her that it preoccupies him to the extent that he’d rather talk about her than play video games with her or kick a football around outside - even if she’s much, much better at it than he is.

(But he still makes comments like all the other boys do sometimes, because when Anja calls him a weirdo she’s just being nice about it, but the boys at school aren’t nice at all. He doesn’t need to give them another reason.) 

“Phil,” she says. Her face looks kind of sad and serious and scared now. “Can you come sit beside me?” 

Phil frowns. “Is something wrong?” 

“Not really.” She sighs, and shrugs. “Maybe. I just feel really strange lately.” 

“Why?” He gets up and sits on the bed beside her, crossing his legs the same way she’s got hers crossed. Their knees touch. 

“Would you kiss me, if I asked?” 

Phil’s heart pounds. He’s never kissed a girl before. “I guess.” 

She turns her head suddenly and her lips are on his. It lasts five seconds, if that, and then she pulls away. 

She starts to cry. 

“What's wrong?” He asks. “Was I that bad at it?” 

She shakes her head and wipes her eyes. “I just don’t think I want to kiss any boys.” 

“Well,” he says. “I don’t think I want to kiss any girls either, so that’s alright. We’re just late bloomers.”

It’s what his mum always says, when Martyn teases Phil. Martyn had his first girlfriend when he was eleven. 

Anja laughs, a wet sad sound. “I don’t think I’m a bloomer at all.” 

Phil is distressed by her sadness. “You know, lionesses always stay together with their pride, and they kick most of the boy lions out to go find their own prides. You just need to find your other lionesses, and who needs smelly boys?” 

She leans over and rests her head against his shoulder. “Thank you, Phil. That’s what I want to do, you know. Find a lioness and just, forget all the boys, they can all sod off.” 

“Oh,” Phil says. He still doesn’t really understand. But now he’s not sure if she’s going to explain more or not. So he swallows and says, “You should be able to do that if you want to, then. Boy lions are dumb and mean anyway.” 

“Are they still mean to you, Phil?” She asks, quietly. “You can tell them that you kissed me, if you want.” 

The sympathy makes him embarrassed, makes him feel ashamed. “I was talking about lions,” he says, forcing a smile and then changing the subject. “Hey, do you want to see this level I just designed for my game?”

* 

Anja finds her lioness a year later. 

She rings him to tell him the first time she kisses a girl, and then a week later he rides on the bus to Manchester to meet the two of them and go to the cinema together. 

Anja’s happy. She’s radiating with it, holding her girlfriend’s hand and brimming with stories about the two of them. Her girlfriend’s name is Kamryn and she has dark hair braided into a hundred little braids and pink dungarees on and she likes Green Day and scary movies and they get along splendidly. 

But Phil still feels like crying on the way back home, not because he’s jealous that his friend has a new person in her life but because Anja found a way to be different and it to be _okay_. She’s okay with herself and she’s happy and Phil just can’t fathom that. 

*

He gets a girlfriend the first month of the next term. 

They’re sixteen years old. Her name is Katherine and she makes a face at him when he tells her that’s his mum’s name, too. His friend says that she’s flirting with him. Phil still doesn’t really quite grasp what flirting is supposed to be, but but she’s got a picture of her cat slid into the front of her planner and she laughs at the jokes he makes sometimes. 

He starts to send her notes during class, because that’s what all the other boys do when they like girls. He’s not really sure what to say in them so he finds a list of facts about cats on the internet and prints it out so he can copy things from it onto paper, making sure his writing is as neat as it can possibly be. 

_Hi! Did you know that cats sleep for fourteen hours a day to conserve energy,_ the first note says. _I tried to tell my mum the same thing when I slept all day last weekend but she just told me I was being a lazy duck and made me do my laundry haha._

He watches her face as she reads it. She turns to look at him and squints her eyes a bit but when he smiles big at her, she smiles back. 

He sends her another note the next day. _When cats walk, their back paws step in exactly the same place their front paws were just in. Do you have AIM?_

She sends him a note back with her screenname on it, and he feels like he’s won a lottery. 

*

“Do you like cats?” He types to her on instant message. “I’m allergic to them. I wouldn’t want a little cat anyway. Only big cats that go RWAR.” 

He watches the typing bubble. 

“You are so weird,” she finally sends. She’s a much slower typer than he is, or else she’s writing things and deleting them. His stomach feels like it’s buzzing full of bees. “Big cats would eat you. I just like my cat.” 

He’s relieved when his mum calls him to eat a few minutes later. 

*

When his mum says she’s going into town over the next weekend, Phil asks if he can go with her. It’s not that unusual of a request. He often goes and looks at video games or computer games, or makes her buy him a sugary coffee. He likes the happy music in the shops and having lunch with her. 

But today he’s on a mission. “Can I have a few pounds to buy someone a present?” He asks. 

“You’ve got your own, mister,” she says, fussing at him. 

“I spent it,” Phil admits, guiltily. 

“On sweets and video games, I’m guessing?” 

She isn’t wrong. “Yeah, but I just new a few pounds, I promise. I need to get something for someone.”

“Oh, is it someone’s birthday? I thought you lot had grown out of parties and presents,” she says. 

“No,” Phil says, and he hesitates only briefly before saying, “It’s for my girlfriend.” 

His mum looks surprised, but she covers it well and then she’s happy, so happy. She gives him a hug and pats his cheek and he tries not to feel strange about how happy she is. 

At least she gives him ten pounds, and says for him to meet her back in an hour.

*

He wanders a shop for thirty minutes until he finds a poster of two kittens touching noses on a pastel purple background. One of the kittens is a gray tabby just like the cat in the picture Katherine has in the front of her binder. 

It’s perfect, he thinks, and takes it to the till to pay. 

*

On the fourth level, Lion and Lemur meet a pretty Lioness who they think will be their friend. 

They travel with her and Lion is blinded by how this is exactly what he's wanted all along. Lemur says he doesn't trust her, but Lion defends her. 

They need Lemur for the puzzle parts, because Lemur has the skill to swing through the jungle trees and tell them about the Hunters ahead. Lemur uncovers every trap and that's how Lion and Lioness get to the wide plain that promises to hold level five. 

But at the end of the level, with the wild brown grass stretched out in front of them forever, Lioness turns to Lion and says she's feeling peckish now. 

She advances of Lemur and Lemur looks anguished and betrayed. "Was this your plan all along?" He asks Lion. 

"No!" Lion says, and leaps in front of Lemur. "You're my friend, I'm not eating you." 

"But he's just a Lemur," Lioness says. "He's not like us anyway." 

"But he's my friend," Lion says again, and he feels awful because Lioness is supposed to be his perfect companion but Lemur has helped him through all of these levels. "You can't eat Lemur. I won't let you." 

Lioness bares her teeth and the battle begins. 

* 

Phil buys the poster on a Saturday. 

On Sunday, he stays in and helps his mum make biscuits and works on his video game and does the homework that’s due for Monday.

He doesn’t know until the following day that a bunch of his classmates all went to the cinema, and he wasn’t invited. He doesn’t know that Katherine went, and that she kissed a boy named Ian that Phil sort of knows but has never really talked to before. 

He feels like someone’s doused him in cold water when he finds out. He doesn’t cry, because that’d make him look like a freak for sure, but his throat feels weird and he spends the entire class period staring at his desk wondering what he did wrong. 

He talks to her afterward. He doesn’t mean to, but he sees her coming out of a classroom and there’s not many people around. His voice shakes when he calls out her name. 

“Oh,” she says. “Hi, Phil.” 

His voice fails him completely then. He looks at her and he feels so awful and he can’t have this conversation, so he turns and walks away. 

*

He messages her later that night. She says she forgot that they were meant to be dating, and Pihl doesn’t believe her at all. 

“Are you sure?” He asks. “Why didn’t you like me?” 

“You’re really nice,” she says. “But you are kind of weird. And it’s creepy how much you like cats.” 

He spends the rest of the day feeling numb and like he’s failed a test that he didn’t even know how to study for. 

That night he cries and melodramatically rips the poster of the kittens in half and then cries harder staring at the two kittens permanently torn apart. 

*

When he’s done crying he goes to his computer. He starts to delete her name from his contact list, but instead spends an hour reading back their old conversations. What seemed like a victory in socialization now just seems excruciating. Had she been laughing at him every time he sent a message? Had she just thought that he was _weird_ the whole time? 

He closes out of Mark of Oxin and opens up the other game he’s been working on, the one he hasn’t told anyone else about.

*

Level five begins with Lioness slinking away, after Lion bests her (without causing her too much injury). 

"She'll be back," Lemur says, worrying. 

Lion says nothing. He feels heavy and dark inside. 

As if to match his mood, a storm starts to gather on the horizon. Tornadoes spiral, sending Lion sprinting with Lemur clinging to his back. They have to outrun the storms, dodging left and right, and when they accidentally run too close they fight it with sparks and strong winds. Lion uses his roar ability to scare the clouds away. 

At the end of the level, Lion realizes he's been too busy fighting the storms to even miss Lioness, and he also realizes that he'd rather have Lemur by his side anyway. 

*

"Level five doesn't make much sense," Anja says to him. "A tornado wouldn't stop to do a battle with them."

She’s spent the day with him for the first time in a very long time. She and Kamryn aren’t together anymore, but she’s got a new girlfriend Phil hasn’t met yet. 

"It doesn't matter," Phil says. "Things don't always have to make sense."

She laughs and agrees. “Like that bint cheating on you.” 

He’s only just told her about Katherine and his ill-fated romance. It’d been to fresh for a while, and then too embarrassing after that. 

“It’s fine,” he says, because now it sort of feels like it is. “She wasn’t that special anyway. Did I tell you she cheated on Ian, as well? And now me and Ian are mates! He’s actually really cool. I might ask mum and dad if he can come to Florida with us, since you’re _abandoning me_ this year.” 

“Oh, don’t you sulk at me, Lester,” she says. “I’d come if I could.” 

“I know,” he says, relenting. “But I miss you.” 

She hugs him. “I miss you, too.” 

*

Maybe Lion, Phil decides, doesn't need a pride after all. 

Maybe he needs something else. A mate - a real one, not one that he picks just because she’s there. 

Level six takes them to a place that Lion feels like he's been in before. They walk through more plains and then the ground turns dark underneath them. Blocks of red start to dance in the background. 

Everything is burnt here. There is no one to fight them. There is no one at all, just a puzzle of danger, and Lion is confused and he’s sad and he knows what he wants but not how to find it. 

But Phil doesn’t even really know how to make that fit into a game. 

*

The thing about school is - 

Phil does have friends. There are people who like him, people he can talk to and hang out with once school’s done for the day. He doesn’t get another girlfriend, but he doesn’t really want another girlfriend. His head is too full of other things and some of them are things he’s figuring out about himself. They’re big scary things that he’s not sure what to do with, so he just does - nothing at all. 

He does nothing and one year passes into two and he gets taller, gets older. His voice deepens and his shoulders broaden and in the mirror he sees changes but on the inside he still feels exactly the same and like he can’t let himself change. 

It’s just too much, the idea that all these people he’s known for so long might end up knowing those things he’s running from. But he’ll be done with college soon and he’ll be starting uni in a new city with new people who won’t know him at all and maybe then he can sort out all the rest of who he is. 

*

Phil knows the costume that he wants from the moment his friends start discussing what they’ll be dressing up as for the last day of term. 

His mum isn’t surprised at all by his choice, just by the price tag on it. “Oh, Phil, that’s so much just to hire a costume out for a day! Can’t we order you something a bit cheaper?” 

But he insists and his mum is a sentimental softie about any turning point in the lives of her children, so she takes him out to the costume shop on a Saturday and lets him find the one that he likes best. They can’t rent it for only a day, so they take it home for the whole week. 

Phil is secretly thrilled. The whole car ride home he stares at the massive head sat behind him on the seat, the rest of the outfit in a dry cleaners bag beside it. 

*

He puts it on as soon as he gets home with it, locking his bedroom door so no one walks in. He does the whole body suit first and then the head before he slides his hands into the paws. 

He stares at himself in the mirror and grins and grins and grins until his face hurts. This is Lion, /he/ is Lion now. He does a little quiet roar in the mirror, just to see what it looks like. He feels just like when he was a kid, running around his garden roaring. 

*

It’s the best day at school, not just because it’s the last and everyone is high on impending freedom, but because he can growl and roar and paw at people. He loves that in the costume, they treat him like he’s doing something hilarious and wonderful. No strange looks, just laughter. 

*

They find a jungle that borders the land of red puzzles, taking them to level seven. 

Lemur goes high up onto the trees and calls down to Lion, "I can't see anything except some monkeys playing around." 

They travel to the monkeys and ask the monkeys where everyone else is. 

"Fires," the monkeys say. "Fires in the plains, and all the big things with teeth left." 

The monkeys are friendly. They brush Lion's hair and teach Lemur some tricks. 

One monkey chirps at Lion, "There is one left, you know. After the fires." 

"What?" Lion asks. "One what left?" 

"One like you," Monkey says. "He wanders around being very sad. You could find him, perhaps?"

"We will find him," Lemur says, hopping onto Lion's back. 

* 

"That level was boring," Ian says. "Nothing really happened in it." 

Phil frowns. "Oh. I guess I could make one of the monkeys rabid." 

"This one's just rubbish, I think. Not like your other one, the other one is cool. Let's play it again." Ian says. “I like the part where he has the threesome with the angel. Maybe not the boyfriend, though, that’s a bit queer, isn’t it? It should be two girl angels.”

Something in Phil's chest is tight and empty feeling. He's not sure why, but it feels very important to him that Ian understand Lion's story. 

But Ian is already closing out of the file. 

Phil doesn't show anyone else Lion's Story after that. 

*

The first time Phil hears the word furry, someone is asking him if he is one. 

He’s in his room in York, pinning photographs up to a bulletin board. One of them is him in his lion costume at school, surrounded by friends. In the picture he’s got the head off and tucked under his arm, so it’s clear that it’s him. 

One of his new flatmates is sat watching him and eating haribo out of the bucket of sweets Phil’s mum left with him. “Is that you?” He asks, cackling. “Upgrade on the hair, mate. What are you wearing, though? Is that some kind of furry thing? Are you into weird shit like that?” 

“Of course not,” 

He laughs and says no because he can tell from how it’s being said to him that it’s not a good thing, but he doesn’t really know - he doesn’t know until later when he looks it up online and sees all the filthy pictures. 

This isn’t him, he decides, because the words on this page make his stomach twist in shame. 

(But he comes back to the website a week later and he stares and stares and stares.) 

 

II. 

Dan Howell is-

He’s there, first of all. He’s always there, responding to every tweet and DM and then instant message and then text and then skype call, lightning fast. 

He’s the only person Phil’s ever known that seems to have all his time available for Phil. And it’s not that Dan’s not busy, he’s got a job and a girlfriend and friends that aren’t Phil. 

But he treats Phil like Phil is most important. And in the back of Phil’s mind somewhere he knows it’s probably just because Dan likes his youtube channel and Dan’s a bit starstruck, but Phil still likes how it feels almost as much as he just likes Dan. 

*

_awrf_ , Phil types. 

_mrowrr,_ Dan types back. 

_do you speak cat?_ Phil asks. _you might have just said something very dirty in cat._

_I might have meant to say something dirty in cat_ , Dan responds. 

Phil grins and shifts on his bed. This is how conversations with Dan go, lately, since he broke up with his girlfriend. 

_In that case…. Arfarf,_ Phil says. 

_wow scandelous. i didn’t know u knew those words, Lester_

_Arffff,_ Phil sends. _Means skype? In dog._

_meeeeowr means only if you take your shirt off…_

Dan’s bold like that, and Phil never knows how to respond. The call box is jumping to life before he can, and he connects. “You didn’t even give me time,” Phil says, using that as his excuse. 

Dan’s face is slightly red, like he’s blushing. “Yeah, wasn’t sure if I made it awkward with that.” 

“You never make it awkward,” Phil says, and he sounds like a smitten idiot but he is sort of one so maybe that’s alright. 

*

And then they meet, and it’s just... 

Everything. 

It’s everything Phil’s secretly wanted and thought he probably couldn’t have, everything he felt burned by before except nothing burns at all. It’s big and scary but Dan kisses him and he tells Phil it’s the best weekend he’s ever had and Dan almost _cries_ when they have to say goodbye, so Phil almost cries too, and they’re so ridiculous that they spend five hours on skype that night just talking about how they want to be back with each other so badly. 

*

They change into their Halloween costumes in a public toilet at the train station, taking turns to use the one cubicle. 

Dan’s kept his a secret. Phil smiles so big it hurts his face when Dan steps out and reveals the costume to Phil for the first time. 

“You’re a bear,” Phil says, and he doesn’t know why it makes him feel so funny and giddy but it does, and when Dan curls his fingers into bear claws and uses them to clumsily grab at Phil by the waist and pull him in for a quick, brave kiss Phil feels like he could just float away.

*

“What are you, some kind of furry?” Dan had asked, on one of their blustery, blissful December days after Phil’s just spent five minutes showing Dan pictures from old facebook albums and it’s been such fun, sharing a little more of his world with Dan. But Dan saw the one of Phil in the lion costume and he’d laughed in a way that made Phil feel, for the first time in days, like he’s just been dragged back down to reality. 

Phil had laughed too sharp and high but Dan hadn’t known him well enough then to understand the facade slipping into place. 

It’s just - Phil’s been through this before. 

He’s weird. He _knows_ he’s weird. He’s weird in a way that got him taunted and teased all through his school years until he learned to embrace it and that laughing with someone leaves less of a mark than watching them laugh alone. He finds his way through softened barriers on sheer dumb optimism alone and eventually it becomes less of a conversation piece and more of an _oh, that’s just Phil._

He’s found some place of peace with himself with that weirdness, and those specific things he likes. Youtube helped so much; it gave him a place where he could just be weird, where he could bark like a dog and draw whiskers on his face and even if people were mean they went away with the click of a button and Phil didn’t have to see hurtful words. 

But more than that, it gave him people that liked his weirdness and made Phil feel like there was a purpose to it. He can do so many things now if he tells himself he’s doing them because they make someone else on the internet happy. 

Dan’s not just anyone anymore, though, and he feels a little betrayed, because Dan hasn’t questioned anything Phil’s done before. When Phil makes strange animal sounds over skype, Dan just makes them right back. When Phil said to draw whiskers on, Dan just did. When Phil said his Halloween costume was a lion, Dan just told him he was a cute lion. 

And Dan - he dressed up, too. He wore a costume just like Phil. 

But that’s alright, Phil decides. It’s not as though it’s ever really been something he _needs_ other people to understand. If this is one way in which Dan is a little less than Phil thought - well, Dan makes up for it by being so much more in so many other ways. 

*

They’re standing in Dan’s kitchen on a February morning. Dan is not quite twenty, and when he asked Phil with a tremor of barely held together desperation if Phil would come back home with him, Phil couldn’t do anything but say yes. 

He’s not sure he even can say no to Dan. He’s not sure he’d ever want to. He is hopelessly, helplessly in love with this boy. 

This boy - who wants to make pancakes for his mum, because it’s her birthday and he wants to do something right, he wants that sleepy smile of surprised joy from her. 

And he wants Phil to help, because Dan always needs that push. He needs someone standing over his shoulder gently murmuring _that’s right_ and _you’ve done that nicely_ , to soothe away the things that creep into the crevices of his mind his wear him down. 

“You’re useless,” Dan says to him, despite the fact that Phil is fulfilling every duty he believes to be his. He’s been excellent so far at kissing Dan’s beautiful face in the morning, at forcing Dan to spend an extra ten minutes in bed, he’s made Dan laugh so loudly he had to fight to quiet himself at least four times, and now he’s just delivered a truly exemplary swipe of batter across Dan’s cheek. 

Phil latches his teeth into Dan’s shoulder and presses gently, nosing against Dan’s hairline as he does. Dan pushes back against him a little, shoulders into the pressure of Phil’s teeth and ass back against Phil’s hips. It’s nice, such a nice feeling. He wants to curl his fingers into Dan’s sides and drive his body forward, wants to pin Dan and- 

There’s a creak of a step. “Are you biting him? You’re fucking freaks,” Dan’s brother says, voice neutral with only a hint of disdain. 

“You’re a freak,” Dan shoots back, but some of the tension is there in his body and he pulls just enough away from Phil that Phil steps back. 

“Sorry,” Phil says. 

Dan is still glaring at the doorway. “Just ignore him.”

*

 

Dan makes more jokes, just now and then. It’s nothing that disrupts the normal flow of their day to day life - and it is, by this point, _their life_. Dan’s got a room at his uni hall but it’s Phil’s flat that he’s really settled into. Dan cleans his clothes in Phil’s washer and learns to cook in Phil’s kitchen and they both explore each other in every way possible spending long nights together in Phil’s bed. So the jokes - they sting, a little, but Phil gets used to them. 

And then somewhere along the line Phil begins to wonder if they’re really jokes at all. 

He catches curiosity along the edges of Dan’s words, the slightly daring look to his eye. He learns this as he learns Dan, and all the ways Dan communicates that aren’t just words put out into the space between them. 

Dan’s brash and afraid and he seeds his thoughts in the ground and waits to see what takes root.

The jokes are mean sometimes. Sometimes Phil has to work to not flinch against them. But Dan is not one of those boys that used to laugh at him, Dan is not his first girlfriend dismissing him for no real reason at all. Dan loves him, he knows it, so Phil learns his way through and Dan stops laughing so much when he realizes that Phil isn’t laughing back. 

*

The first time Dan brings it up for real, he does it in the most Dan-like of ways - after sex and with no preamble. 

They’re their apartment, this brand new apartment that has both their names on the lease. Moving was exhausting and took him and Dan and Phil’s dad and his brother all to get done in just one day. But it’s done now and when they wake up tomorrow Phil won’t know what parts of him are sore from moving and what parts are sore from celebrating. 

But then: “Do you bite me when you come because it’s, like, an animal thing?”

Dan’s face is red and probably, Phil thinks, not just because of the orgasm. He doesn’t like Dan talking about things like that. Dan calls him a prude sometimes, another one of those jokes that sting. But he knows Dan doesn’t really mean it. Sometimes Phil thinks that Dan wants Phil to defend himself just so Dan can find some reassurance in what he’s allowed to do. 

“Maybe it’s a cannibal thing,” Phil says, because sometimes deflection is all he knows. 

“No, but really.” Dan rolls over and looks at Phil. “You do it a lot. And sometimes when I’m on my hands and knees you even bite my shoulder.” 

A tremor of nerves works its way through Phil, that flush of hot embarrassment. “I can stop,” he says. “If it bothers you.” 

He’s suddenly and irrationally afraid Dan is just going to leave. 

“It doesn’t,” Dan says. His tone is careful. “It’s just, you can tell me, you know. I won’t - judge.” 

“Won’t you?” Phil asks softly. 

He’s been on the internet. Everyone judges. Everyone judges everything, to be fair, but people judge this especially harshly. 

“I don’t know much about it. Like, for real,” Dan says. “But I’m not going to make fun of things you’re into. I mean, you don’t make fun of my weird sex things. Like how I still come after two seconds sometimes.” 

“Yes I do,” Phil says, smiling the tiniest bit. “I do make fun of that.” 

Dan rolls his eyes. “Yeah but, not seriously. And I wouldn’t seriously make fun of you for this.” 

“Your thing is something that most guys go through,” Phil points out. “And mine is something everyone makes fun of.” 

“So you think I’m just like everyone else?” Dan sounds slightly hurt, and that’s not what Phil meant at all. There’s no one else in the world like Dan, but even knowing that doesn’t make him less scared sometimes. 

“No, Phil says. He takes a breath and steels himself. “I guess it’s just something I like. Biting you.”

“On my shoulder,” Dan says. 

“On your shoulder.” 

“When you come.” 

“Dan,” Phil says, face burning. 

“I’m just - you know it’s like an animal thing, right?” Dan asks. Phil really, really hates how Dan will just barge ahead with a topic sometimes. “I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. Animal stuff. In bed.” 

“And.” Another breath. This is so hard, why is this so hard. “Out of bed. It’s not just a sex thing. It’s not a sex thing at all, it’s never been - that. It’s… more.” 

(Maybe sometimes it was a sex thing, but Phil didn’t realize it was a sex thing until far more years past when he should have.) 

Dan rolls onto his side. His hair is an absolute mess and that spot on his face is still red, but his eyes are narrowed in and keen. “Like what?” 

“Dan, I don’t _know_ ,” Phil says. “It’s just me being weird, that’s all.” 

“Okay,” Dan says, frowning slightly. “If you say so.” 

*

Dan doesn’t bring it up again for another two weeks, and when he does they’re on the phone together. 

Dan’s back in Wokingham for a short visit, because his mum still asks Dan to come home every few months. Dan complains every time but he still goes, mostly. 

“I’ve been doing some reading,” he says. 

“About what?” Phil asks. Dan reads a lot of random things. He’s prepared to hear a diatribe on politics in some country Phil couldn’t even name on a map or the reviews an experimental new indie album is getting or what climate a certain kind of fruit needs to grow. 

He is not prepared for Dan to say, “About furries. And how it’s really a culture.” 

Waves of discomfort lap high against the wall Phil’s built around this in his mind. He is what he is - but he doesn’t talk about what he is. He feels betrayed. He thought Dan _got_ that. 

“I’m not part of a culture,” Phil says. 

“You could be, though. It’s like, so massive - there’s so many people into it. They have meetups, you know? And some of them own these big fuck-all suits that look like you’d die in come summer time but not all of them do that, some of them just have these whole fursonas - do you have a fursona?” 

“No,” Phil says, slightly appalled at the idea. He doesn’t. Right? 

“Sure you do,” Dan says.. “I mean, you’re a lion, right? That’s your whole… thing.” 

Phil’s face feels cold and his ears feel hot. He’s glad that this is just a phone call and Dan can’t see his face. He doesn’t even really know what his face is doing, just that it’s probably giving away a lot of feelings that Phil doesn’t want to be feeling right now and certainly doesn’t want anyone else being witness to. “I don’t know, Dan. I guess.” 

He sounds snappish and he knows it. 

Dan doesn’t say anything for a while, and then it’s just a simple: “Okay. Well, listen to what my mum said…” 

They spend the next ten minutes talking about Dan’s parents, and then Phil says he has to go. 

*

Dan has a way of worming into Phil’s brains with thoughts and ideas that Phil wouldn’t have ever thought on his own, and this is no exception.

He’s glad when Dan’s back home from. They stand in the doorway and hug and hug and kiss and Phil doesn’t want to let him go. A week is too long now, with the promise of no more weeks stretching apart for a long time. Phil’s too addicted to the way it feels to have Dan with him every step of the day, every moment of his life. 

“I have something to show you,” Phil says, tangling fingers with Dan and leading him over to the sofa. 

He pulls out a stack of glossy photographs from his last years of school. 

“Baby pictures?” Dan’s face lights up. “I thought your mum already showed me all of those.” 

“Hey, I’m not a baby here,” Phil says, laughing. “I was only a few years younger than you are now.” 

“Oh, right.” Dan pokes him in the side. “Old man.” 

“Shut _up_!” Phil laughs and flips through then hands Dan the stack with a specific one on top. 

Dan’s eyes go wide. The pictures of Phil in the lion suit he wore on his last day of school, and he knows from repeated shuffling over the last few days what the others are: various ones of Phil at events as the lion, a few where Phil had his head off, somewhere his face was painted instead. “I remember these, you showed them to me a couple years ago.” 

“Yeah, I know. But I guess,” Phil says, hating how his voice shakes. “You’re right, and it’s, um. I’m - a lion. Because I liked that - wearing the costume. It felt really good. So I guess that makes me… I don’t know. I just, I think, maybe.”

“Oh.” Dan looks down at the pictures again. There’s something so soft in his expression. “This is really cute, Phil.” 

He leans in and kisses Phil, one hand on Phil’s face and the other stuff clutching the pictures. “It’s stupid,” Phil mumbles, lips still against Dan’s. 

“No.” Dan pulls back and looks again. “It’s perfect. It’s you, you know?” 

“I’m no lion,” Phil says. “Unless you mean a cowardly lion?”

Dan looks slightly taken aback. Phil’s not usually the one to use such a cutting tone against himself. That’s more Dan’s area. 

“You’re not,” Dan says, kissing Phil’s nose and then his mouth again. “You’re a brave lion. The bravest. You’re not afraid of any of the dark places I am.” 

“Dan,” Phil starts to protest. 

“No, shut up, listen,” Dan says, speaking suddenly and fiercely. “You are a lion and I know you are because you’d fight anything that tried to hurt me, even when what you have to fight is me. A cowardly lion wouldn’t do that.” 

*

“What would I be?” Dan asks. The question catches Phil off guard, the way Dan’s questions often do. It’s been weeks since they’ve talked about it. 

Maybe Dan caught on that slow and steady is the way to go with things like this. 

“I don’t know,” Phil says. “What do you feel like you are?” 

He doesn’t pull Dan close. He wants Dan to have room, all the room he needs. “I don’t know,” Dan says. “I need rules.” 

“There aren’t any.” Phil doesn’t know how to make Dan see that this is not about what to be, it’s about what you get to split yourself apart from. 

But Dan looks so confused and so frustrated. 

Phil sits up in bed, crossing his legs. “What do you like?” 

“I don’t… music, making youtube…” Dan sounds like he’s guessing. 

“No, I mean. In your head, what do you like?” 

“I like.” Dan’s eyes are cast off to the side. “I like when it’s quiet. I like when I don’t feel alone.” 

“You’re a pack animal,” Phil says. 

“No,” Dan responds. “No, I don’t want a pack. I just want… a mate. Like, you know, last year when I was going through all that shit with uni and I just wanted to curl up in a den somewhere and ignore everything until it stopped hurting you would just curl up with me. That’s what I want.” 

The last words are so soft, so quiet. 

“Wolves mate for life,” Phil says. “You’re like a lone wolf.” 

“Is that a pun on my last name?” A smile tugs at the corners of Dan’s lips. 

“Maybe,” Phil says, teasing slightly. “But it’s true, as well.” 

“Next you’ll be saying you know how to make me _howl._ ” 

“Maybe I do,” Phil says. He picks up his phone and starts to look through pictures. When he finds one he likes, he tilts it to the side. “This is you.” 

Dan laughs. “That wolf is far too sexy to be me.” 

“Nah,” Phil says, putting his phone aside. He reaches out and runs his fingers through Dan’s hair until Dan slumps beside him. “I think it’s just right.” 

“You’re not a lion,” Dan says, sweet and smiling. He traces his fingers across Phil’s cheeks. “You’re just a little kitten who thinks he’s big.” 

Phil mewls a little. He’s stretched out on the bed, feeling petted and loved and content. He likes this place they go where there are vocalizations beyond words and nothing feels too off limits. 

*

It’s not the next time they have sex, or the time after that. 

But the time after that - Dan’s been in a foul mood all day, angry at himself for failing to meet the deadlines he gives himself, angry at Phil for either pushing too hard or not pushing enough or just standing in the wrong spot and breathing. 

So Phil’s left him alone for half the day, hating how it feels to know he can’t help Dan but unsure what else to do. 

“Hey,” Dan says, standing in the doorway. He looks like he’s been crying. “Come here?” 

When Phil’s walked close enough, Dan grabs his hand. Phil finds himself pulled into the bedroom. “I’m a wolf,” Dan says. “I’m howling.” 

“Oh-” Phil can’t quite wrap his mind around this. 

Dan shoves his shoulders. “You know what I want.” 

He thinks, absurdly, back to school and playing lions and tigers on the playground. 

He shoves Dan onto the bed. Dan’s back hits the mattress with a strangled grunt, but he turns over and buries his face in a pillow and puts his ass in the air. 

_Oh,_ Phil thinks. 

This is new.

*

(It’s not new, not entirely. It’s only new with someone else.

But Phil will never admit to being fifteen and rutting against a pillow with fantasies in his head he felt so embarrassed by. He will never admit to walking around his school wondering if everyone knew the things he’d done, and swearing every time he’d just to try to be normal, he’d stop being such a freak. 

He could tell Dan, probably. Dan might even be intrigued. He’d probably ask if Phil did it like that in uni, if Phil’s ever watched those videos that Dan certainly watches. He may even be turned on by it, because Dan loves to pry dirty secrets and desires out of Phil.

But Phil thinks of his younger self and how mortified his younger self would be if anyone ever found out and he wants to shield that confused boy from all his fears, even a decade and a half on.) 

*

Sometimes this is all Phil thinks he really has to offer to Dan. 

Dan skulks around in the shadows of a room, he snarls and snaps or he just curls up defeated, until Phil pets his hair and kisses him and uses a little more force - not force in bed, not even physical force. He just pushes, pushes Dan into a place outside of his own mind, when he thinks Dan needs it or when Dan lets him _know_ he needs it. 

Sometimes it is sex, sometimes they end up with Dan kneeling in the bed, face buried in a pillow while Phil strokes his back and fucks into him. Sometimes they sit on the floor and Dan puts his head in Phil’s lap and whimpers something painful that he can’t find the words to actually express. 

Phil will hold him close, after sex or after tears, and tell him what a beautiful, good boy he is. Maybe it’s related to the other thing - maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just Dan fighting with himself, in his own head. But Dan is beautiful and Dan is good and Phil has never really felt like he knows what he’s doing so if this works, he’ll keep on doing it. 

It’s just strange to Phil because what this thing is to Dan is not what it’s ever been to him. 

For Phil, it’s a place he goes willingly in his own mind. It’s a daydream that’s lingered in the back of his mind for as many years as he can remember. 

It hits some other place in Dan, though, some raw and untouched nerve. Phil can’t even decide if Dan really seems to enjoy it but he does know Dan _needs_ it sometimes in ways Phil never has. 

*

 

“When I was younger,” Dan says. “My friend and I used to play like we were Sonic and Tails. I liked it, you know. I got really - I got really into it. We both did, but me more than him. And I’d get really mad when he didn’t commit. Like, if we were doing it, we were doing it, you know? I didn’t want him to suddenly start talking about what his mum was supposed to make for dinner when we were in the zone.” 

Phil listens, and he doesn’t interrupt. 

“And it was the same later on, when I took acting lessons and did theater. I liked it because it was getting outside of my own head for a while, but sometimes we’d do these exercises where we were supposed to pretend to be different things and I’d always go for an animal. Made my teacher furious, but I always did it anyway.” 

“Bad dog,” Phil says, teasing gentle because he thinks he can. 

Dan snaps at him playfully. “I get what you mean, when you say it isn’t just sex. And I know that. I always knew it, and I’m sorry I was a dick about it. I know you tried… for a long time. And I was just weird about it. Like I’m weird about everything. But I don’t want to fuck you up over this, because there’s nothing wrong with it.” 

“Dan.” Phil frowns. 

“I’m just gonna fuck you up,” Dan says, and Phil just… he watches. 

He can see Dan start to shutter off, but he can’t do anything but watch. He doesn’t know where Dan goes when he disappears into himself like that, he just knows it’s somewhere dark and sad. 

*

Phil can’t help Dan, not all the time. 

Luckily for both of them (but mostly Dan) there are other people who can, and people who can give him things that make the world not quite so dark. 

*

They hit a cadence between them, where the animal stuff - the _furry_ stuff, Phil makes himself acknowledge in his own head - because something they can say aloud between them and no longer entirely hidden behind a wall of humor. 

Part of it is Dan’s newfound desire to feel no shame for things in his life he’s spent too long being ashamed of. 

Part of it is just an extension of the comfort between them. There’s more out in the air now, less tucked away and repressed and treated like a ticking time bomb waiting to blow up in their faces. They have power over their lives, and perception of them, and they’re high on discovering something that was really in their grasp all along. 

This feels like not the most important part, but not an insignificant one either. 

*

He’s not sure when Dan starts doing real research again, but he knows when Dan starts to make jokes that are actually spoken directly to the audience. 

“Are you okay with it?” Dan asks once. 

Phil shrugs. He’s uncomfortable even giving an answer, which Dan gets. 

But Dan’s doing this annoying thing lately where he’s taking things he learns in therapy and he’s applying them to Phil. Dan a year ago, two years ago, would have taken Phil’s discomfort as an answer itself and reacted with hurt, or frustration, or confusion. 

What might have led to a fight then just leads to Dan, curious and patient with him now. “If you aren’t, I can leave you out of it.” 

That’s another thing they do; remember that they’re individual people who can make decisions on an individual basis. 

Phil doesn’t say anything. 

“Phil?” Dan prods. “I’ll leave you out of it.” 

Phil’s intensely grateful, but underneath it he’s frustrated and disappointed in himself. “For now,” he says. 

*

“Phil,” Dan says, standing in the doorway of the bedroom. 

It’s early 2017 and they’re stepping foot into a brave new era for them… only it feels less like a leap most of the time and more like their normal, everyday life where for a few minutes a week they do slightly less ordinary (for them) things in front of a camera. 

This, though. This is just _life_. And in this moment in their life, Dan has just finished playing a game Phil made and abandoned over a decade before. 

Phil’s got his laptop on his stomach, youtube video paused when he heard Dan’s footsteps approaching. “Are you done with the game already?”

It’s only been half an hour. 

Dan crosses the room and sits on the bed, hip touching Phil’s thigh. “I played through what there was, yeah. You never finished it, though.” 

“Yeah.” Phil sighs, and rubs his fingers absently over his touchpad just to have something to do with them. “I fell out of sorts with it after I showed it to a friend - Ian, actually, I showed it to Ian - and he didn’t like it. He didn’t - understand. And I guess back then I thought that no one would ever understand, and it made me mad.”

Dan tuts sympathetically. “Do you mind that I saw it?” 

“No,” Phil says softly. He shuts his laptop and moves over and on the bed, giving Dan room to lay beside him. “I wish I could go back and tell teenage Phil that it didn’t matter, though. That sometimes it’s alright to like things that other people don’t understand.”

Dan kisses his forehead. “That’s cheesy as fuck.” 

“Shut up,” Phil says, laughing and shoving at Dan. “We’re not playing that one on the gaming channel, though.” 

“Yeah,” Dan says. “I figured.” 

There’s quiet between them. Phil thinks about saying that he’s not sure this is something he’ll ever want to talk about with anyone but Dan, that he’s thought about it long and hard and he just doesn’t think he’s the same kind of person as Dan. Dan is the kind of person who wants to speak things out loud so they feel true, and Phil thinks this can live in his head and be a _thing_ in his life without needing anyone else to know. 

It’s a theme in their life, trying to work around their individual needs. They clash and compromise and somehow in the end they work it out. 

*

Phil tabs the question. He’s not sure if Dan’s seen it or not. Maybe Dan skipped over it on purpose. Maybe Phil should. 

“Choose your fursonas,” Phil says. “And name them.” 

He’s looking at Dan through the open laptop. Dan doesn’t register any surprise, just takes the lead and runs with it. 

Dan doesn’t turn it back on Phil, but Phil doesn’t wait for him to. He starts to talk, something ridiculous spilling out of his mouth, and Dan patiently encourages the train of conversation for decidedly longer than will ever make it into the video. 

*

“Scaley Phil, is it, then?” Dan asks. 

They’re straightening the rarely-used duvet back onto the bed, preparing for a careful ritual of washing the whiskers off and treating themselves to something delicious and greasy for dinner. 

Phil’s been waiting for the question. He likes how indirect Dan is, asking things he knows it’s easier for Phil to respond to rather than the direct line of questioning that always makes Phil feel so uncomfortably on the spot. 

“I’m playing the fursona field,” Phil says. 

“No more Lion?” Dan reaches out to flick the tiny little plush on the bedside nightstand. 

“Lion’s still there,” Phil says, mildly defensive of both the toy and the part of him he feels associated with it. “Just, maybe there’s room in the Phil mind palace for little bitty lizards, too?” 

Dan laughs. “You’re ridiculous. And you’re not allowed to lay on me and say you’re using me as a sun lamp.” 

Phil’s face lights up. “I hadn’t thought of that!” 

“Oh my god,” Dan says. “Please go back to flinching every time I say the word fursona.” 

“Never,” Phil says, because Dan’s only joking but Phil surprises them both with how confident his tone is. 

“Okay, Dan smiles at him and says in that tender, curious voice Dan gets sometimes when he is especially proud of Phil. “Good, then.” 

*

(Phil has a dream that night. 

In his dream, he’s a lion prowling around a wide open field. 

He’s not sure how he got there or where he’s going next, but for right now he feels like he’s exactly where he belongs.)

  
[art by psychicmoth](https://psychicmoth.tumblr.com/post/168980346144/alittledizzy-alittledizzy-take-all-the)

**Author's Note:**

> This took a damn village and I am not ashamed to say how much I've leaned on my friends to coddle and coach me through this. Thanks endlessly to Dann, Leela, Shoe, and mermaid.


End file.
